


i can't give you everything (you know i wish i could)

by queenofthestarrrs



Category: Archie Comics & Related Fandoms, Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Discussion of Abortion, F/M, Jughead Jones Needs a Hug, Just More or Less A Lot of Angst, Teen Angst, Teen Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-13 20:48:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12992238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofthestarrrs/pseuds/queenofthestarrrs
Summary: There is the heaviness of the just in case, in the could have beens, in the might bes, in the future.





	i can't give you everything (you know i wish i could)

The day Betty tells him she’s pregnant is the day he first shoots a gun.    
  
The Serpents have him practicing on an old fashioned revolver. It’s heavy in his hand, a weight that, if he still had time to write poetry, would seem to denote the heaviness of an opportunity to end a human life. He tries to keep his steady, holds his wrist just as FP shows him. There is a tension in shoulders he hasn’t felt before. There is the heaviness of the  _ just in case _ . He would have never imagined, as a child, that the town he loved so dearly would have become a place where he felt safer with a gun tucked under his waistband. 

 

In the empty parking lot, abandoned in the south most part of Riverdale, Jughead takes his first shot. His hands are shaking and sweaty despite the relative chill that sinks deep into his bones.    
  
It’s a clean bullseye, right through the piece of wood that splinters off onto the gravel. He can hear the sound of Sweetwater River,  just a few miles away, raging and lapping against the shore. His father is smiling at him, and he can imagine the rowdy laughter and the clasps on his back he’ll get when he returns back to the Whyte Worm. Despite his smile, something naws at him.    
  
He did not want to perpetrate violence. He did not want to get caught up in, well, all of this. But his dreams for his town, for his family, for his friends, for his own life, seemed to float away down the river with Jason Blossom’s body. 

 

-

 

He can feel his phone vibrating in his pocket as he and FP lazily make their way back towards the center of town. He mostly ignores it, embracing the feeling of the wind in his face and the yellow lines as they zip by beneath him. It’s mid-spring by now. He’s supposed to sit for the SATs soon, over on the Northside. He had dreams, a long time ago, of leaving New York all together. He imagine heading out west to see his sister grow, to eat his mother’s chocolate cake in a sunny kitchenette. He imagines heading even further, to Portland or Seattle, to see the Pacific.    
  
Now, he can only imagine what he could do with a spare sixty dollars. He and FP could treat themselves to meal that isn’t their typical canned soup and television dinners. He could make sure Sweetpea’s little sister got the new school shoes that she needed. He could even keep it for himself, treat himself to a few used books off of Amazon or give his motorcycle a fresh coat of paint. 

  
His phone does not stop vibrating. It will pause, for a few moments, and then it will continue again. He plans on answering it, of course. It could be Archie, torn up over something again, or it might be his sister, even though their talks are becoming less and less frequent. 

  
Gravel crunches as they peel into the parking lot. The Whyte Worm is strangely crowded for a Sunday morning, but most of the Serpents didn’t have anywhere else to be. He doesn’t.    
  
His phone’s old and cracked; he didn’t have money to fix it, and it didn’t really bother him. It was functional, and he had plenty of other things that his money should probably go to. Betty’s picture pops up on the screen as it starts to vibrate violent. It’s a nice picture of her, of the two of them. They look genuinely happy, staring at each other in the same booth at Pop Tate’s. The neon of the lights shines brightly off Betty’s hair, and it casts shadows on the table. Jughead is smiling, much differently than the half smirks he’s been giving during the past few weeks, 

  
He makes a mental note to change it once he hangs up. 

 

As soon as he taps the little green icon on the screen, he can hear the raggedness in Betty’s breath. It is quiet and repressed, but he’s quite acquainted with the sound of her fear. A red hot bolt of nausea strikes him where he stands, dread fills his stomach. In a town where murder has been happening relatively frequently, his mind goes a mile a minute.    
  
“Thank God, you finally picked up the phone, Juggie.” Betty’s voice is high and watery. She sounds like a Valley Girl, like a caricature of the perfect Northside girl. Jughead’s throat feels like it’s closing.    
  
“Jughead,” Betty rapidly corrects herself. “I’m glad you picked up the phone, Jughead.”

 

“Well, at that point, you might as well call me  Forsythe Pendleton.” He regrets it as soon as it comes out of his mouth. He left her in this very parking lot, nearly a month ago. From there, it seemed that the chasm between them grew almost as deeply everything else in this town. Betty had her family, her friends,  _ Archie _ , and her perfectly lined streets and her Friday night lights. Jughead had what he always had, his wits, a mouth he never knew when to shut, and a little life he cobbled together. He wasn’t jealous, he really wasn’t. They were just  _ different _ , and he’d honestly prefer to keep it that way. Betty was built for a happy sheltered life; more importantly, Jughead believed she truly deserved it.   
  
“This isn’t a joke, Juggie.” Betty sounds on the verge of tears. He imagines a Betty few have seen. With her blonde curls cascading over her shoulders and her makeup free, looking still undeniable beautiful.    
  
“I didn’t say that it was.”   
  
Tall Boy is watching from the doorway. Jughead deliberately turns his back to him. He can’t seem to do much to sway Tall Boy’s opinion in his favor, but he has no problem reminding him that the Serpent on his back affords him certain protections. Those, occasionally, included privacy.    
  
“I’m pregnant.”   
  
“How did this happen?” His own words sound hollow in his ear. Of course he knew how this happened. He had actually attended health class, if not just to watch Coach embarrassingly stumble female reproductive anatomy in front of  a group of freshman boys He was always well enough aware that leaving two sixteen year olds, hormones raging, to their own devices in a house with a master bedroom seemed liked a much better idea at the time then it did now.    
  
“Have you told your mom?” That’s a much better follow-up question. He’s almost proud of himself before he imagines the heat of Alice Cooper’s gaze on his back. He imagines the disappointment of his own mother, her voice bound to sound more melancholy than it normally did over the phone. He imagines an alternate future, where Betty could go and live and be even if he couldn’t. It seemed like such a heroic thing to do.    
  
“No,” is her firm response. “I, uh, I took a test a few minutes ago. I bought them off of Amazon. I know it sounds silly, but I was just so embarrassed and scared and, and alone. I didn’t want to go somewhere by myself. Anyway, that’s, uh, that’s not important. I, uh, you’re the first person I wanted to tell. I figured you’re the one who most deserved to know.” 

 

“Thank you,” he says and means it. 

 

Jughead stands there quietly for a moment, listening the uneven breathing at the other end of the phone. There is nothing for them to say. There is everything to say.    
  
Jughead tries to imagine what his child would even look like, if he would even have a child. Betty didn’t have to keep it, he mentally chastises himself. He could drive her into the city of that’s something he wanted, to see a doctor or meet with an adoption counselor. There’s nothing to say that they had to follow their parents’ lead. They did not have to stay in Riverdale. They didn’t have to become a family. They did not have to give up their dreams.    
  
(Jughead closes his eyes and allows himself, just for a moment, to indulge himself in a fantasy. Of a child and a wife, and a life that he was proud of living in a town he had already given his life to. At the same time, he can taste the cold tang of the Pacific in his mouth.)    
  
“What are we going to do, Juggie?” Betty’s voice sounds more stable. Us, we, them together, that was more familiar territory. It was familiar and safe and felt permenant even if it hadn’t ever been anything like that since it started. 

  
He’s already putting his helmet on. He can feel his motorcycle rumble to life as he presses the kickstand up. His father comes up behind Tall Boy’s shoulder, the two of them still standing at the door.    
  
“We’ll figure it out together.”    
  
And before he can even really know what he’s doing, Jughead is speeding along on a road he’s taken a hundred times.


End file.
